


Deception Check

by Rhinocio



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types, The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: ADHD Jake, Amputee Leo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22867606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinocio/pseuds/Rhinocio
Summary: Leo Tarkesian is looking for information. Stories about exiled reptilian aliens in New York City sewers, as it turns out, work as great bargaining chips.
Relationships: Leo Tarkesian & Jake Coolice, Leo Tarkesian & Mama (The Adventure Zone), Minerva & Leo Tarkesian
Comments: 20
Kudos: 50





	Deception Check

**Author's Note:**

> I made a comment about the TMNT being exiled sylphs in the [Ducknerva Discord](https://discord.gg/b55pvCQ) and the response was too funny not to build off of. Special thanks to [Spooks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpookyModernJazz) for encouraging me with equally great love for Excellent Protagonist Leo Tarkesian. Comments and critiques are always welcome; please enjoy this shitpost turned serious.

It’s a roasting hot afternoon in August, and Kepler’s most eclectic grocery store has been understandably vacant all day. Leo Tarkesian has only just given up crouching to reach a bottom shelf and opted for sitting on the linoleum when the bell rings and announces a visitor, which is about how his luck tends to go. He’s halfway to his feet when the palest little boy he’s ever seen peers around the aisle, a brightly-coloured ballcap jammed over his white hair. He’s gangly in the way Leo was growing up, limbs growing from a stout core like strawberry vines reaching for the next plot of land. He balks back when Leo rises to his full height, pulling his arms closer to his body and stepping away from the shelves as if trying to prove he isn’t touching anything. 

“How’s it hanging, bud?” Leo asks, giving the last bag of cat food he was stocking a boot to keep it from spilling out into the aisle. The kid watches him the whole way back to the cash. “Lookin’ for something?”

The boy shakes his head, but his vision wanders slowly around the store anyway. Tucked under one arm is a piece of wood that looks like it’s been macgyvered up to work as a skateboard, with four mismatched rollers meant for chairs hammered into the bottom of it. The kid picks at the edge of it with his free hand, leaning backward to see down the aisle behind him.

“You can look around, if you like,” Leo offers, folding his arms on the counter and shrugging with one shoulder. He doesn’t recognise the kid, and hasn’t heard news of anyone in town adopting recently. Leo knows the locals, their gossip and their histories; he’s studied them like he once did the maps of the New York underground. Tourist season's packed in as far as skiing goes, and at most the boy might be twelve years old – too young to be an unattended visitor. “I’m Leo, by the way.”

“I’m Jake,” says the boy finally, with a cadence that’s raspy around the edges and faint despite its conviction. He finally steps backwards and starts stalking down an aisle, holding his board close and eyeing the rows as if their contents are going to jump out and bite him. Leo swallows a snort of amusement and takes to disassembling the couple of boxes he’s got stored behind the counter while he waits for the kid to browse. He fans himself periodically with the cardboard, to try and wash away the unseasonal heat that’s settled around the town like a blanket. Soft clacks add percussion to the staticky cassette tape Leo has playing as Jake lifts things from the shelves and sets them back down. 

Curiosity gets the better of him when he hears Jake gasp a delighted, “Oh!” from two aisles down, where the medicinal products are kept. Leo strolls down to the head of the shelves, still peeling at the tape on a folded box, and grins when the kid freezes, looking every bit like a raccoon under headlights.

“What’d you find?” he prompts, and Jake nervously holds up a box of bandaids as if they were a shield, his wide eyes searching Leo’s body language for threat. Leo keeps his distance. “Oh, Ninja Turtles!”

“Barclay lets me watch them!” Jake announces, setting the box politely back on the shelf, and Leo stills. He recognizes the name, and the correlation makes Jake all the more curious a presence. Kepler isn’t a busy town, as far as new residents go, or so the policewoman in his apartment complex told him. In recent years there’d been an influx of new faces, though, all folks who mostly kept to themselves and all of whom lived up at the Amnesty Lodge on the topside of town. Leo had been doing delivery runs to the place since he took over the grocery store a year back, and Barclay was the giant of a man who took the bags of flour and flats of dry goods off his hands. 

Barclay had been Leo’s first indicator of a bizarre pattern, but he’d yet to string together the strange appearances of the recluses of the Lodge and the nagging feeling he had that they had something to do with the interplanetary gate he’s been hunting for since ‘88. With a rueful sigh at his own morals, Leo heads for the freezer. 

“You know I met them once?” 

“The Ninja Turtles?” Jake squeaks, and rushes after him, still at a distance. “Barclay said they weren’t for real, though.”

“Well, they don’t live here, do they?” Leo shrugs. He rises from the collection of frozen goods with a blue treat wrapped in plastic, and leans against the freezer as he rips it open with his teeth, being sure to keep it in full view of the kid’s now hungry eyes. He bites off a chunk, and finds the coolness of it worth savouring, if not the flavour. Jake steps closer, rising up on his tiptoes as if the few inches will help him better see the rainbow of contents in the icebox. “You want one, bud?”

“Yeah,” Jake mumbles, still leaning back and forth like a meerkat with its nose to the air. Leo shoves the sliding top of the freezer open and waves a hand, climbing back onto his stool behind the counter as the kid rushes forward to throw himself headfirst into the thing. His hat nearly topples off his head as he rattles around for a snack.

He holds up a tricoloured popsicle in Leo’s direction, expression pleading, and Leo nods. Jake’s feet kick delightedly against the freezer as he pushes himself back out of it and slams the lid closed; one hand continues to flap as he brings the popsicle over for Leo to tear the top open on.

“Too dang hot out,” Leo sighs, lifting his freezie in a toast. “But at least it smells good here in the woods. New York City smells like garbage.”

“Yuck,” Jake empathizes, already gnawing on the top of his treat and dying his lips red in the process. “You lived in New York City, no joke?”

“Born and raised there. And the Ninja Turtles are no joke either. We fought evil together once.” Jake searches the room for a moment before dragging over the footstool Leo uses for higher shelves; his popsicle is left sideways on the counter and starts melting into a tidy pool of multicoloured syrup. He clambers onto the seat and rolls his skateboard back and forth with his feet, staring at Leo intently. Leo carefully hands his popsicle back, the wood handle tilted at an angle so he doesn’t get his hand covered in the drippings. “A monster came out of a subway tunnel one night, see. Like it was a portal.”

The moment of truth passes with Jake’s sudden stillness as his only guide – Leo takes the gesture as a good sign.

“It was a big woolly thing, like a– you ever seen a mammoth? Big tusks and fur you couldn’t see its eyes through, smelled like sour milk. Came out of the shadows late one night when I was walkin’ home, and I must’ve jumped ten feet in the air, scared the poop outta me.” Jake laughs at the choice of language, ducking behind the counter as if he’s worried about being caught in proximity of such rebellious terminology. Leo taps his freezie against his knee as he recalls the night, and the creature he fought – it hadn’t been an accidental run-in, and he’d certainly been better armed than he’s currently letting on; “All I had was a pocketknife, so I fished it outta my boot and threw it hard as I could at the monster’s face.”

“Radical,” Jake whispers reverently, feet bouncing.

“Yeah, maybe, but mostly it was stupid. Got the thing’s attention without any more of a plan. So I started haulin’ as– butt outta there, fast as my beansprout legs could carry me.” Leo wiggles his own feet for emphasis. He’d mapped the terrain of the underground between monster confrontations, knew them like the back of his hand, and he’d lured the creature into a tight space its bulk couldn’t handle gracefully. There was a cavern part of the way down the abandoned tracks, and Leo had ducked into the mouth of it with his broadsword at the ready, his breathing schooled to a whisper. “I tucked myself up in the shadows and tried hard not to let the thing hear me as it stomped up the tunnel. Every footstep sounded like a firework goin’ off. I thought my goose was cooked, Jake. And then you know what happened?”

Jake is practically vibrating in his seat, his hands and feet pulsing as the excitement in his brain wiggles its way out through his limbs. Blue sugar syrup is trailing down his wrist, melting in the heat and forgotten.

“Ninja Turtles?”

“Ninja Turtles. Though you know what? I think they got some things wrong when they made the movies. They’re not people-sized, for one thing. Well, they’re probably Jake-sized.” Leo bites at the ice still wrapped in plastic, thinking back the twenty-odd years to that night in the abandoned subway. He’d been more alarmed at the movement behind him than the monster incoming, and thought at first that the bodies scuttling around in the dark had been massive sewer rats. Guarding two flanks was much harder than one; he’d taken a chance with the monster he could see. Leo had made a lunge for the mammoth’s Achilles tendon as soon as its massive foot was in view, cleaving clean through it as he slid from one side of the tracks to the other. He’d made a leap for its back when the monster buckled forward, only to be slapped away like a pesky fly. He’d flown a good ten feet before the brick wall of the tunnel had stopped him. Leo’s ribs still tweaked on that side when he inhaled too deep. “I thought I was done for, kid. The big hairy thing was just about to drop a fist down and smoosh me when something clobbered it. Looked like it was being pelted with giant pinballs.”

Leo had thought he’d suffered the worst concussion of his life at the time; later his mentor had suggested he’d met some of the connected world’s inhabitants, though she couldn’t reason why they’d be on his side of the gate. 

“For one thing, they ain’t turtles, they’re tortoises. You know the difference?” Jake shakes his head, eyes wide. “Big round shells with kinda spiky shapes, brown skin. Long, long necks. Heavy as hell. Heck.” He points a finger at the kid. “Don’t repeat that.”

Jake laughs, and Leo finds himself grinning along with the kid’s enthusiasm. The amusement fades as he remembers he’s in the middle of a manipulative interrogation, and he pulls himself back on track. It’s getting harder and harder not to grow attached to the people in this town.

“But they’re still ninjas, right? With the bandannas and the cool weapons and–? I like the orange one, he– he’s Michelangelo and he has num– numbchucks!”

“Nunchucks, yeah, that’s right. Mike was a nice guy, probably not much older than you, I guess, ‘cept he’s a turtle, so who knows.”

“You said they were tortoises.”

“Eyy, not bad, good listening,” Leo says, and Jake beams at the praise. “I dunno if they were technically ninjas, they didn’t have the cool gear, though Mike was usin’ a big ol’ piece of rebar to hit the monster with. Sort of a jerry-rigged weapon, kinda like your board.” 

“You talked to them?” Jake asks, leaning so far forward on his stool that he nearly falls.

“I was pretty surprised they stuck around to talk to.” Leo had struggled to his feet, weapon still in hand, and delivered the final blow by stabbing the mammoth through the forehead. The tunnel had lit up with silver light as it exploded, and the four-armed figure that stood in the aftermath lingered longer than any ever had before, looking between the squat figures that had assaulted it and Leo, as if considering the consequences of them all meeting. Normally the figures bowed before leaving; this one stared Leo down until it disintegrated. Its eyes were the last to go.

He’d pressed a hand to his chest and started feeling for damages on reflex, before remembering he probably shouldn’t show weakness in front of potential threats; the creatures beside him had looked up at him as he looked down, the faces shadows in the dark. The silence was long, hesitant.

And then the smallest had started laughing, held his hunk of metal up, and compared it to Leo’s sword, asking, “Whose is bigger?”

“There was four of ‘em: Mike, Raphael, Donny, and–”

“And Leo!” Jake gasps, as if he’s only just made the connection. “Two Leos!”

“Yeah, they thought that was real funny. They weren’t too keen on comin’ out of the dark, said they were hiding out, keeping an eye on the gate, trying to protect it.” 

“Like–!” Jake shouts, biting down suddenly on the words as if he’d realized halfway through he wasn’t supposed to speak on the subject. Leo makes a mental note of confirmation: the kid knows something about the local monster-hunters, about whoever’s protecting the gate.

“Like heros, right? Pretty brave of ‘em,” Leo suggests, and Jake perks back up again, nodding brightly. So the monster-hunters he knows are people he admires, probably folks he’s close to.

“Was there a Splinter too?” 

“Dunno, didn’t ask. They weren’t super talkative, if I’m bein’ honest.” The youngest, in fact, had seemed much more keen to be friendly than the rest, who repeated hissed at him in a language Leo couldn’t understand. The shimmering scars on the wrinkly skin of the largest and the cautious stares of the lot of them suggested they’d been down in the subway for a while, and they confessed they’d seen Leo fighting more than once. “They figured I was gonna beef it, and gave me a hand.”

He’d seen one of the comic books a few days later on a sidewalk rack, and had flipped through it for long enough that the store owner had barked at him to buy it or get lost. The similarities were uncanny, though the novelized versions of the characters clearly had had some artistic liberties taken. Leo still wonders if the author had met the same squad he had (hopefully far from the gate at 91st Street) and figured it a fever dream, same as he might have if the alien woman who gave him superpowers hadn’t told him otherwise.

“So here’s the thing, Jake, you gotta keep this a secret,” Leo says, rolling his now empty freezie package over his fingers. “I don’t wanna get sued by anybody, and the Ninja Turtles wanted to keep their low profile.”

“I’m good at keepin’ secrets,” the kid says, and there’s a steely determination in his eyes when Leo glances over. 

“You sure I can trust you with this? I haven’t seen you around here before. Usually I get to know my customers before I tell them my cool monster stories.” He digs his nail into his palm to push back against the self-hatred that bubbles up in his bloodstream, and Leo reminds himself for what must be the millionth time that he’s doing this for a good reason. You’re doing it to help, the mantra goes, to help, to help.

“I’ve been here for like–” Jake falters, glancing around the shop as if he’s expecting a chastising. He sighs, and the sound is far too heavy for a kid his age. “A couple years? I just haven’t come in here before.”

“Alright, well don’t be a stranger, then. I try to keep the things my customers like on hand.” Leo gestures to the empty popsicle wrapper in Jake’s grip, the handle of which he’s rolling back and forth. “I’ll be sure to keep a couple extra of those stocked for you, especially with the weather like it’s been.”

Jake sits up, his face splitting into a grin before falling nervously. 

“Do I gotta pay for this?” he asks, and Leo laughs.

“I’ll put it on the Lodge tab,” he reassures, with no intention of doing so. It isn’t the first time he’s given product away – as a business practice perhaps it isn’t wise, but Kepler is a small town with good people, and Leo’s a bleeding heart. Doesn’t hurt that the items usually end up less gifts and more trades for information, whether the receiver is aware of it or not. 

He stands and holds a hand out for Jake’s wrapper, tosses the kid a baby wipe from under the counter so he can clean himself up, and then asks, “Were you in here for a reason, by the way? You never said.”

“Oh.” Jake holds up his homemade skateboard, and gestures to one lopsided wheel. “The screw popped out. I wanted to get a new one, but I think they only come in big packs.”

“Not a problem, kid,” Leo says, clapping his hands on his thighs. “Let’s hook you up.”

Jake stands on the stool beside him as Leo scrounges a proper sized screw out of the mason jar he has drilled to the underside of the cash register for quick repairs. He fishes the utility knife from his boot, same place it’s lived for decades. Surgery on the board takes no time at all, though Leo pauses to inspect the board’s quality wood and the careful carve of it; it's been sanded and finished to the kind of amber glow interior decorators dream of, despite the scuffs of use.

“Mama made it,” Jake announces proudly when he asks.

‘Mama’, as it turns out, must be one Madeline Cobb, the proprietor of the Amnesty Lodge. Several hours later, when the sun has begun fracturing the sky into a rainbow kaleidoscope and the heat has finally begun to ease, she tromps her way into the store, looking ready to pick a fight. Leo doesn’t know her all too well, as she mostly keeps to herself, but he’s got years of practice in identifying threats.

“Good to see you, Madeline,” he says, all enthusiasm. If she has issue with the informality of the title he uses, she says nothing, but her eyes narrow all the same.

“Evenin’, Mr Tarkesian.” 

“Something I can help you with? You’re not one of my usual last-second shoppers.”

“Heard you met Jake,” she says, dodging the pleasantries. “Had a whole lot to say about the stories you were tellin’ him earlier today. Somethin’ about monsters comin’ out of portals? I dunno if you noticed, but he’s about the age kid take those things to heart. He probably ain’t gonna be sleepin’ well.”

Leo nearly laughs at her attempt at a coverup. If Madeline is the person leading the town’s monster hunts, she’s certainly not the wisest choice. After thirty years as a vigilante in the crowded streets of New York, Leo’s learned how to keep a low profile, and how to worm information out of the locals. His best friend is a war strategist, and taught him the ropes. Madeline, bless her, is revealing her entire hand in a single sentence. The brazen confrontation style of the Lodge owner is as hilarious as it is endearing.

“Aww,” Leo drawls instead, running a hand through his curls and looking as sheepish as he can manage, “That wasn’t what I was goin’ for at all. We were talking about the Ninja Turtles, Madeline, he seemed fond of the characters. I made up a story about seein’ them back in the city. Meant to entertain the kid, not to scare’m. He must live up at the Lodge, then?”

The woman gives him a long, appraising look, and then says, “We’re keepin’ an eye on’m, yeah,” and Leo shoots back a fond smile.

“He’s lucky to have someone so ready to wreck shop for him. I’ll be sure to watch what I’m tellin’ him next time he comes around, stick to the lighthearted stuff. Think he’d be into Spider-Man?” Madeline snorts, and her shoulders relax. Her hands fold casually into her pockets. Leo resists the urge to shake his head at the volume of her actions.

“Think he’ll be just fine as long as you aren’t talkin’ monsters next time. I’ll get outta your hair, I know you’re closin’ up here. Wanna toss me one of those Twix for the road?” She rustles some coins from her pocket but Leo waves her off. The reach is confident, but Leo feels the tremble in her fingers as she takes it from his open palm.

“Two bars in a pack. Give the other to Jake and tell’m I’m sorry.” 

Madeline leaves with much more gentleness than she came in, a furious lion of a woman blown out like a lamb. The doorbell jingles in her wake, and Leo flips the sign to ‘closed’ behind her. He ducks behind the counter once again and shoves his hand beside the register, flips a thin piece of wood out of the way and grabs the notebook he keeps tucked into the secret storage compartment. He thumbs through it for a bit to find a fresh page, past folded flyers and newspaper clippings of events and locations throughout town. There are headlined notes on each of the people he’s met in Kepler, all written in a shorthand of his own invention. Leo creases the book flat and adds what he’s gleaned.

Madeline Cobb is involved with the monster hunting in Kepler. Possibly a leader, probably not flying solo. His previous notes about the appearances and then sudden vanishing of creatures suggests there’s a team of people at it. His own monster sightings dropped off a few months after he’d moved to town, which means they’ve been operating for at least five years.

The Lodge is housing reclusive strangers who appear out of nowhere and seem to have no relationship to each other. They’ve probably come from the gate. Might be wearing some kind of human disguises. Jake is one of them. Barclay likely is, too. Madeline has a stronger alias given how long she’s been in town, but there’s no sense completely discrediting the idea that she’s one as well.

The gate, Leo writes finally, with a hatched symbol that looks like the maw of a subway tunnel, is somewhere close to these people, probably within a few miles of the Lodge. Madeline doesn’t want anyone finding it. With good reason, Leo supposes, but he can’t help feeling like this is a battle that might be better handled with a wider net. He rubs at his prosthetic leg, ruefully aware of how much he might have liked having teammates in the past.

As if summoned by the thought, the air in the empty shop shifts minutely; Leo lifts one of the unopened soda cans on the counter in a toast without looking, and hears a bemused snort from behind him.

“Hello, Leo Tarkesian,” Minerva says, and the spectral form of his longtime teacher leans over his shoulder. She hums thoughtfully. “You have learned something.”

“Learned a lot of somethings. Got a couple of aliens living in town. Lady that runs the Lodge up on the hill is involved. Gate’s–” Leo sighs. “Well, don’t know much more than we did already. Somewhere in the woods, probably close to Amnesty.”

“Then you will resume the hunt for it,” Minerva decides. Her hands are on her hips when he turns, her imposing silhouette looking out over the aisles of goods with ghostly, undefined eyes. Leo nods, conceding that it’s about time he did another nighttime search of the Monongahela to try and find the link between Earth and its paired world. There might be people guarding it now, but Leo is the failsafe. He has to know where to look if there’s monsters to be taken down. He has to help.

“Minerva,” he says slowly, chewing on his tongue. “What if I talked to her about it? Madeline has some direct involvement with the gate. She’s living with people from the other world. Maybe it’d be better to work together.” His mentor is already shaking her head as he begins speaking, but the movements become less insistent and more resigned as he goes on. “It’s all for the protection of the people here, right? What’s the damn difference?”

“I know it sounds wisest to collect your forces into one. Normally I would recommend it. But you are part of a great destiny for the fate of your entire planet, and these individuals are free agents. We cannot have your actions being swayed by their decisions.”

“Even just as a pooling of resources,” he argues, rattling the pen in his hands. “Keep each other informed, work together to protect the town. I can’t see that being bad, Minerva.” They stare each other down for a long moment before her proud posture slouches, and the identity of his teacher morphs into the more familiar shape of his friend. 

“Being Chosen is lonely work, _Ibztharhi._ You must remember that. If the current guardians of this town are compromised, you cannot afford to be attached to them. You must be able to protect the gate, and strike down the abominations that come through it. It must be secret work, so that none endanger your quest.”

Leo drops his face to his hands and rubs, willing back the argumentative enthusiasm he had as a teenager. He’s done this thousands of times. The battles never stop. Minerva had told him, a lifetime ago, that they never would. As long as the gate remained, it was his job to follow and guard it. He’d agreed to those terms, but hadn’t realized how isolating the experience would be. A part of him is jealous for whatever operation Madeline is running – at least she has company, someone to watch her back or mourn her if she falls victim to a hunt gone sour.

“What if you found somebody else?” Leo asks, holding up a hand when Minerva balks, horrified. “Someone I can work with. Another Chosen. Somebody here in town. I’m getting old, Minerva, I can’t do this by myself forever.”

The silence is long. Minerva’s hands fold over each other, lost in nervous thought. Leo’s phantom leg aches. Far in the distance, thunder rumbles, the result of an intense atmosphere finally breaking.

She nods, and disappears. Leo reaches for his notebook and folds it closed.

He considers, reopens it to a fresh page, and writes, ‘Jake: alien. Wearing a disguise? Relations: Madeline Cobb, Barclay. Likes tricolour popsicles, Ninja Turtles. Good info source. Good kid.’

The shop is still, filled only with the hiss of the cassette tape spinning and Leo’s own breath. He moves towards the far wall to start his routine shutdown, and pauses by the back window, his finger on the lightswitch. Amnesty Lodge, a distant shape at the top of the hill, is bathed with the kind of rich warm light his fluorescently-lit store envies. He watches the gentle sway of the pines around it until the sunset drains away and leaves it dark.

Leo drives home alone.


End file.
